Okay I think we’re losing focus, because I never said anything about the celebration of Filipino history month.

To retrace our steps… in your original post you were saying that we should make more of an effort to learn more about Filipino pre-colonial history. I’m saying that’s difficult because there were so many different groups of people that compose “pre-colinial history”.

By the term cookie cutter, I mean nice and neat. Not a piece. I don't think we can have a nice, neat, complete history.

I mean you can argue that since we’re so mixed that it’s important for us to know everything we can about everything that’s happened since the first person set foot on the Philippines, but that seems a little impractical. The 170 native languages (not dialects) in the Philippines show you how different the groups were. Is it really fair to rubber band them all together and slap a “pre-colonial history” sticker on it?

Let’s use the Native Americans as an example: Does it make sense to group Eskimos with the Seminoles even though they had different identities and probably little to no interaction? Not really. Just because they live in same geographic area of what is now the present-day United States doesn’t make them one united group.

Same thing with the Philippines, does it make sense to group the Ibanag with the Moros, who had different cultures with probably little interaction with each other just because they are both from the same geographic area of what is now the present-day Philippines?

Using the geography of where those groups resided is oversimplying the fact that these were unique groups of people. That's like saying that Dilated Peoples sound the same as Sa-Ra just because they're on Okayplayer.

Like Vette said, our fragmented history is what unites us. And as you were alluding to, we should celebrate and embrace our shared identity because we are one people. But our shared history only goes back to a certain point. There IS a starting point. Prior to that, the people that composed us were unique and individual groups of people. As a matter of practicality it makes sense to say that the history began with colonization. Otherwise, how far do you have to keep going back?


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On a side note: I'm really glad that you and I having this discussion and I co-sign other folks' posts on appreciating this thread, specifically spivak's

"and in some ways, what's most important is to keep asking these questions, to keep reminding ourselves that it's crucial to think of these things, even if we disagree, even if we change our positions. to grapple with this, in some ways, really speaks to our postcolonial condition. to play with the idea of being filipino--to have fun with this serious matter. this is how i know i'm filipino. that and a love for all things ube."